


so if you close your eyes

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (sing song) guess who it's for?, It says general audiences but it mentions K's suicide (or attempt in This case), K is soft, M/M, Polyamory, This is fluff, everyone is soft, it starts out angsty, married boys awe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:59:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9810362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Joseph Kavinsky is alive.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FalseCamaro (Gandalfgirl579)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gandalfgirl579/gifts).



Each member of the Dream Pack has at least one tattoo. 

Jiang has dozens scattered over his body, the tiger on his shoulder and the phoenix on his hand being two of his favorites. Skov has a couple, and most of them don't make sense unless they're viewed from the right angle or explained. Swan has three small ones, and Proko has four. Kavinsky himself has a handful, all dreamed up, but his favorites are the tattoos he puts on not himself but others; Although the "King" scrawled across his shoulders has a special place in his heart, especially now that Prokopenko has "Princess" scrawled in curly font on the back of his neck.

The "Princess" is Prokopenko's second favorite though, because as much as he loves it (and loves that Kavinsky loves it), the first tattoo Kavinsky ever gave him holds a special place in his heart (and sometimes he hopes in Kavinsky's). The little black "K" sits behind Proko's ear and it becomes a tell for him to raise his fingers back to press against it when he's nervous. It gives Kavinsky an idea.

The next time Swan is out on the couch after everyone is gone from the party, nearly unresponsive when K jostles him to roll him onto his stomach, Kavinsky executes the idea. He presses his thumb into the dimple in the dark skin on the right side of Swan's lower back. Swam mumbles and squirms but doesn't really wake up even when Kavinsky removes his thumb and an inked letter K sits where before there had only been skin. He smiles at it and pulls down Swan's shirt again, going to find Proko in his bed to sleep through the drop out of his high and wait for someone (Skov probably) to find it. 

Skov does in fact find it, and while at first his eyes dip into a scowl it seems Swan doesn't mind, simply twisting to try and see it in the mirror and demanding to know how K had done it without him noticing. K gives him a sly smile and offers to show him. Swan nods almost in a daze, but Skov easily and smoothly inserts himself between them and says, "give it to me." Kavinsky doesn't give a shit, and this only furthers his plan as Skov puts his bare feet on the coffee table and offers K his ankle. K takes it and presses his thumb below the knob of bone. Skov hisses but holds still until K pulls his hand away. A little black K sits inked permanently on Skov's skin. 

The hardest is Jiang. Because Jiang has never put up with any of K's possessive shit, least of all being tattooed.

Kavinsky's first attempt seems like a success; he presses a K into Jiang's shoulder after slipping something into his drink. No one noticed, or no one cared considering it was only the pack present. It seems like a success except the next morning K finds himself waking up to the front door closing and Jiang coming in with a tank top on, plastic covering the K on his shoulder. Skov demands to see his new ink and Jiang gives in. Where the K had once been sits a black rose and Kavinsky scowls. 

The second attempt goes much like the first. A K pressed into Jiang's elbow, Jiang getting it covered when K isn't around. This time it's a fish blowing bubbles into the soft crook of Jiang's arm. 

The third attempt isn't like the rest. It's Jiang awake and drinking and laughing. It's Kavinsky pressing himself to Jiang, grabbing his wrist in a stinging grip. It's words whispered in his ear, "to remember me by." It's confusion. It's fear. It's pain as K disappears in a ball of fire and Proko collapsing into Swan's arms. 

It's feeling like throwing up when people scatter and the police show up. The third attempt feels like a punch to the stomach as Swan puts Proko in a car and hauls ass away and Jiang looks for Skov futilely before doing the same. It's going to the Kavinsky mansion because they don't be know where else to go and laying Proko on a bed. 

The third attempt is the feeling of fear as Skov peels into the driveway. The feeling of terror as he drags a limp body into the driveway out of the backseat. It's relief and anger when Jiang falls to his knees next to Kavinsky and he's burned to shit, but he's breathing. 

That night smells like hospital antiseptic, and not enough sleep, and pressing on the K so hard for so long that the next morning he can barely see it through a bruise. 

The following weeks are like a bad fever; the feeling of sickness and discomfort as Kavinsky wakes up and yells at Skov for saving him, as he breaks down to a level that Jiang didn't know a person could. The boy in the hospital bed doesn't look like the Joseph Kavinsky Jiang first met, but rather all the pieces of him put together wrong. 

Skov leaves first. He came first, he leaves first. Except he doesn't leave alone. Swan goes with him and Jiang follows all the way to North Carolina. They drag Proko kicking and screaming, and if they're taking the Prince they know the King will follow. The minute K is out of the hospital he comes to get Proko, snarling and spitting and coming face to face with Skov at the door. Skov, who verbally rips him apart so thoroughly that Jiang feels sick again. Who knew him half as long as Proko but somehow set up shop in his head, knew enough and could say it just right that K turned and got right back in the car. But with Swan in the drivers seat and the address for a specially picked hospital in the GPS. 

-.-

Jiang presses his fingers to the small tattoo on his wrist. He traces his fingers over it again and again and swears it's risen like it was the night it was branded onto his arm. He closes his eyes at the memory of K's face in the hospital light. 

"Hey." The word brushed over his neck as a nose presses into his jaw. 

"Whatever you're thinking, cut it out," is mumbled against Jiang's skin. Jiang huffs out a breath, but raises a hand so fingers can come up and tangle with his own. He studies the hand, the fineness of the fingers despite multiple scars and the healthy protrusion of the bones of the wrist. He remembers Joseph Kavinsky's wrist before, how small and delicate it looked. How skinny, how perpetually bloody his knuckles were. He brings the hand to his mouth.

"Proko awake?" He mumbles into Joey's fingers and he shrugs. Jiang rolls his eyes and lets go of his hand to roll over and prop himself up on an elbow, looking over Joseph Kavinsky's splayed form to the body of Proko sleeping behind him. 

"Nope," he murmurs and Joey reaches up, grabbing Jiang's elbow. Jiang looks down at him. 

Healthy, he thinks. His eyes go over Joey's chest, no longer collapsed looking and too skinny. His skin is tan, a real tan- not yellow, not leeched of color. He's got scars, a large path burn scarring over one shoulder crawling up his neck and down the right side of his chest. The tattooed revolver that had been on his hip is gone. But hell, his cheeks aren't sucked in, he's not covered in drug-induced blemishes and his eyes shimmer with mischief instead of drugs. The tick marks, as many years as he's been clean, are a dark red on his good shoulder. Jiang brushes a thumb over them, all six. 

"You're thinking too loudly," Joey grumbles and Jiang can't help but let a grin slip.

"Whatever Joey," he says and Joey scowls, swatting at him. 

"Don't call me that it sounds like I'm a child," he says, scoffing quietly, and Jiang quirks an eyebrow. 

"Well Joseph makes you sound like a married guy in his forties," Jiang counters and 'Joseph' rolls his eyes and wiggles his left hand at Jiang. 

"Got half of that at least," he says and Jiang flops onto his back, shoving Joey's shoulder. 

"Don't remind me," he grumbles and Joey smiles, leaning over him.

"Don't remind you of what?" Joey asks innocently and Jiang looks past him at the ceiling. 

"Don't remind you of-" joey clears his throat dramatically, dropping his voice into a mimicry of Jiang's, "- 'you've been clean for five years Joseph Kavinsky. And dammit I hated you, I still hate you sometimes, but I was always going to want to spend my life with the real you, the one under the drugs.'" When Joey stops speaking he gives Jiang an amused look and says, "dork."

"You remembered his speech," says a gruff sleepy voice from Joey's other side, "so I don't think you have critique room Joey." Joey makes an aggrieved sound when he hears Proko say his name. 

"Of course he remembered my speech," Jiang says with a snort, "he only repeated it back to me a hundred times, all the while saying, 'that's the bet you could do? Really?' At least he didn't bitch about the ring."

"Either ring," Proko says and wiggles his own ring finger. The two rings on it glint back at them, one from Joey and one from Jiang. The interlocking J's on his wrist stand out stark and black in the early morning light. Jiang looks at his own wrist. 

He'd kept the K for a long time. But when Joey had settled into being clean, getting healthy, looking like a human again it felt wrong to call him 'K'. Like K was a different boy, a boy who had died in that inferno. Joey was the boy left behind, or even the boy he had been, or could have been, before. Either way when Jiang came to terms with it, when Joey asked everyone to call him Joseph instead, he'd changed the tattoo.

He'd covered up tattoos before and he knew what he wanted over the K. It hadn't been easy but he'd spent several minutes drawing over the K until he was satisfied. He added an arch between the two top points of the K, making it an R. Except then he'd drawn a line going up behind the R and added a hook to the front 'foot'. The result was a P and a J, crossed in the middle. Proko had gotten the interlocking J's not long after and Joey followed, getting the crossed J and P just like Jiang. 

Joey catches Jiang inspecting his wrist and grabs it, flipping it to trace the letters with his index finger. 

"I wouldn't dare," he says firmly and presses his lips to the tattoo, looking at Jiang with eyes that say 'alive alive alive.'

Joseph Kavinsky is alive.

**Author's Note:**

> check my bio for my tumblr


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